


we learned our truths too late

by fawnlike (amainiris)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, F/F, Gen, Hannibal/Will if you squint, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 04:50:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20383957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amainiris/pseuds/fawnlike
Summary: She remembers running her hands over the thick pelts, nervous in the aftershock, that she took something that can never be given back. The breathlessness of it, the knowledge thatyes-you-can-do-this, you can do something unfettered by goodness and morality and law and all the chains of forgiveness. The way the light goes out in their eyes makes something inside of Abigail go still.He called it love, but she knows better now.Three people who thought they could fix her and the one who knew he couldn't.





	we learned our truths too late

_ This wasn’t supposed to be my life. _

  


_ * _

  
  


She counts the days by the seasons. There is summer, that warm tumbling wind devoid of death and air and dark, and then there’s autumn, the rebirth and resurrection. Five deaths allowed a year. Four does and a buck.

Less than her dad killed during his own hunting season, by any rate.

She remembers running her hands over the thick pelts, nervous in the aftershock, that she took something that can never be given back. The breathlessness of it, the knowledge that _ yes-you-can-do-this _, you can do something unfettered by goodness and morality and law and all the chains of forgiveness. The way the light goes out in their eyes makes something inside of Abigail go still. 

He called it love, but she knows better now.

  


*

  


Spring reminds her of Alana, summer of Marissa.

Autumn of Hannibal.

But winter, strangely, belongs to Will.

  


*

  


Alana’s compassion is a deliberate obstacle. The woman tries to maneuver, somehow as merciless as Freddie Lounds but nowhere near as dishonest. Everything is a trauma response. Everything is a _ reaction _. 

She reads books and the pages turn by themselves. Alana’s kindnesses go unanswered, as do her overtures of politeness. As much as Hannibal pretends to view her as a victim, at least he knows she’s something else too.

“How have your nightmares been?”

She’s not pandering, she’s not just being _ kind. _And something in that hurts more than if she were.

“Better,” says Abigail with a paper-thin veneer of fragility, oh-so-good at playing the casualty. “Shouldn’t they be?”

Alana doesn’t buy a word of her bullshit, and Abigail respects that, somewhere down deep. One afternoon in the hospital the older woman moves to take her hand, and just as Abigail moves to react, to flinch, something in her softens. She yearns closer to it even as she knows she shouldn’t; something in her wants to shudder, draw away, even as the whole of her pulls tight.

“Do you dream about them, Abigail?”

A circle of dead girls, Mom’s throat in a bloody smile. They all look like her. They all look exactly like her.

“No,” Abigail says. “No, I don’t.”

  


*

  


Day after day she fails. Hands on her wrists, pulling tight, twisting when she bursts out in breathless laughter. The nip of teeth at her collarbone. Swallowed up by the receding light.

She never goes too far with Marissa, always fearing it will be like a skipping stone, that unmistakable step onto a path she can’t turn back from. They stop at fumbling beneath clothes, hands sliding over salted skin, mouths never alighting where they seek to land.

Marissa goes on to date pretty dark-haired, blue-eyed boys, and Abigail feels herself swallowed up by the ground.

Still, her friend returns after her dates, pressing palms into Abigail’s, swearing that this guy’s nowhere as good as he thinks he is, nowhere near as funny. Abigail returns with her usual caustic humor, and thinks faintly--_ they can’t make her smile like that, they just can’t. _

Sometimes Marissa goes soft, asks Abigail for answers about her wariness, the instinctive fear. But Abigail can’t describe what she can’t understand.

Marissa sees obstacles as inspirations, but Abigail won’t budge.

And then Marissa ends up on a pair of antlers, anyway.

  


*

  
  


When Hannibal cradles her to him like something he loves, something he couldn’t bear to hurt, in a way she hates him.

_ Liar, _she thinks.

She knows she is no more a victim than Nicholas Boyle, or Garett Jacob Hobbs on that kitchen floor. She knows that there is nothing wrong with doing bad things to bad people.

Abigail likes him better when they’re sitting feet apart, their positions carefully orchestrated, deep in the luxury of his office. Abigail crosses her legs and pretends she gives a shit about what he says; but in a way, she does.

One day he brings up religion, to her surprise. But then, he’s always surprising her.

“Don’t you trust God, Abigail?” Hannibal’s gaze is far too penetrating for the shadowed light.

“I don’t trust anyone,” she returns bluntly. “And wouldn’t you say He created us in His image?”

  


*

  


Will holds her hands and something within her crumbles.

_ What does it feel like to kill someone? _

It’s the worst feeling in the world, he replies, and something bitter overflows the walls of Abigail’s heart, because she knows he’s lying, just like Alana, like Marissa, like Hannibal, but this time she knows why.

Through the window there is the metallic gleam of snow, and Abigail senses the strangeness of the season, the clarity that taught her to appreciate the beauty of endings. She wants to ask, _ do you love him? _

But she knows his answer, and she won’t deny the dignity of his response. She folds her hands back over his and squeezes. It's impossible to hate anyone you understand. 


End file.
